this legislation which was a bipartisan bill, senator larry craig and myself authorized this legislation, is a life line for these hard-hit rural communities that are working on a tightrope, mr. president, trying to balance, for example, how they're going to keep the schools open and how they're going to have law enforcement in their communities. and declining revenues from federal forests spurred the creation of this program to compensate for the loss of receipts from the federal forests and suffice it to say, without this legislation we could have school perhaps three days a week in a big chunk of rural america. and i mention, you know, law enforcement, the question of how you maintain 24-hour law enforcement in a lot of these areas has been drawn into question and i think without this assistance we might have some counties facing, you know, bankruptcy. and given the fact that this language does not, you know, clarify the status of the secure rural schools program, i have to object and i'm going to continue to object until teenage does -- the ladies and gentlemen clarifies it would be